试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

福建师范大学

Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little. That is one of the themes in Dnanel Ariely’s new book “the (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty”. Most of us think we are very wonderful. We can cheat at a little and still keep that “good parson” identity.Ariely, who is one of the most creative social scientists on the planet, had one blind colleague and one sighted colleague take rides. The drivers cheated the sighted colleague by taking long routes much more often than they cheated the blind one, even though she would have been easier to mislead. They would have felt guilty cheating a blind woman. Ariely points out that we are driven by morality much more than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might call the good person construct and the moral calculus it implies. For the past several centuries, most westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as depraved sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer ― part of a daily battle against evil.But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the good person construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral pluses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: the good person isn’t shooting for perfection and more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal and a generally good guy.Obviously, though, there’s a measurement problem. You can buy a weight scale to get an objective measure of your diet. But you can’t buy a scale of virus to put on the bathroom floor. And given our awesome capacities for rationalization and self-deception, most of us are going to measure ourselves leniently. I was honest with that blind passenger because I am a wonderful person. I cheated the sighted one because she probably has too much money anyway.The key job in the good person construct is to manage your rationalizations and self-deceptions to keep them from getting conspicuous. Ariely suggests you reset your moral gauge from time to time. Your moral standards will gradually slip as you become more and more comfortable you’re your own rationalizations.I’d add that you really shouldn’t shoot for goodness, which is so vague. We’re mostly unqualified to judge our own moral performance, so attach yourself to some exterior or social standards. And as we go about doing our good person moral educations, it might be worth asking: Is this good enough?1.To which of the following statement would Ariely agree?2.Western traditional culture maintained that human nature is （）.3.According to the author, good person construct （）. 4.The word “leniently” in paragraph 4 most probably means（）.

Three years ago, French entrepreneur Gary Cige was helping a friend hang a mirror in his country house when they realized they needed a drill. But where to get one? Buying one would cost 150 Euros, a huge waste considering they needed it for only half an hour. And since it was Sunday, every rental shop would be closed. Yet as Cige realized, they were likely surrounded by drills. Odds are, at least one of his friend’s neighbors had a drill that was sitting idle. Why wasn’t there some easy way to find a drill to rent — for just a few bucks?Propelled by that idea, Cige cofounded Zilok, a startup that offers precisely this service: People post possessions they’re willing to rent out, along with a price. Cige’s Web site processes the fee, tracks the reputation of your renting partner, and— in France — even issues insurance for your item. After two years in business, Zilok has 150,000 items listed, with 6, 000 transactions a month, and it’s the fastest-growing renter of cars in France.Peer to peer renting — and similar services— has boomed in the past few years. Some work like Zilok, while others let people exchange things they own (such as book and CDs at Swaptree). A few even let you take advantage of space that’s lying fallow, like Shared Earth, where land owners hook up with gardeners.In essence, we’re seeing a new relationship to property — where access trumps ownership. We’re using bits to help us share atoms. The genius of these sites is that they make a virtue of modern society’s ecological sin: oversupply. In developed countries, we’re prosperous but horribly wasteful. We buy tons of things we use rarely —and which sit unused in basements and storage lockers.Peer renting and sharing is, of course, an old idea. But it never took off before, for logistical reasons; it was too hard to connect millions of renters to owners. The Internet’s Bayesian ability to make markets solved that problem. The net also provides crucial glue, as the new startup Zimride proves. Ride-sharing systems have historically petered out because it can be kind of creepy to pick up strangers. So instead, Zimride lets people share rides with friends of friends from Facebook through either Facebook Connect or networks it sets up for individual organizations. “The limiting factor before was trust,” Zimride cofounder Logan Green says, “and Facebook solved that.”Besides the environmental benefits, there are economic ones. Some users of Zilok make more than $1,000 a month circulating their possessions. Granted, it’s not enough to quit your day job, but a little extra dough for almost no effort never hurts.As peer-to-peer renting and swapping evolves, tools like geolocation and micropayments could make it even smoother and more ubiquitous. Rachel Botsman, coauthor of What’s Mine Is Yours — a new book that documents “collaborative consumption”— envisions a world in which everyone’s stuff reports its status in real time: Where is the right now? Is it available for use by someone else?Your property could circulate for days or months, making your money instead of molding in your garage “We’re facing a revolution in the way we think of ownership,” Botsman says. Or, to put it other way, your drill may be my drill, too.1.In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by （）.2.Which of the following is true of Zilok?3.Peer-to-peer renting essentially features （）. 4.It can be concluded that the success of Zimride mainly lies in the ability of（）.

Last week 29 earnest American high school students were invited to an evening of receiving good words, small talk, warm toasts and fancy silverware.“Find out something about the person sitting next to you,” advised formal US secretary of State Madeleine Albright. “Eventually, you'll discover they always have something interesting to say. And you should always use the proper silverware in the proper order.”Albright was the guest of honor at the imitated Official dinner, which was a lot like a real official dinner in Washington minus the soft money. The evening was sponsored by the St. Albans School of Public Services to introduce its first class to the fine art of social survival. More than 84 guests, including students, teachers, school donors and speakers gathered to imitate the lifestyle of the rich and the political.The idea was to teach the social graces that will help students survive any social situation. Anyway, the whole proper fork thing is overrated. Formal white house official C. Boyden Gray shared its top tips for surviving dinner parties: “Drink as little as possible until you get to dinner. “Don’t be the first person there or the last person to leave.” “Try to get more out of your dinner partners than they get out of you.”Every Official Dinner has a greater reason for being. State dinners, for example, are either an opportunity to reward emerging democracies or strengthen old friendships.The official dinner was intended to show the students an elegant evening in Washington — part of the four-week intensive summer program to encourage public service. The students are from 13 states and two foreign countries.The program includes classes on the presidency, the courts, the media and interactional affairs. The students also debated public policy issues. “They’re still at it at 10 o’clock at night” said director Mary Waikato. “That’s good practice for Washington, isn't it?”Since there was no band, Albright offered herself up as the night’s entertainer. No singing, but stories about her life in diplomacy. “Being secretary of state is the best job in the world,” she said, “better than being president, because you don’t have to deal with the elections.”1.Last week a group of high school students were invited to the dinner party （）. 2.According to Madeleine Albright, at an official dinner （）. 3.The imitated Official Dinner is different from the real ones in that the dinner（）.4.We can conclude from the passage that（）.

Although cats cannot see in complete darkness, their eyes are much more（）to light than human eyes.

To explore mechanical secret detection, a search institute has developed a synthetic nose which can detect scents in vapors at a（）of one particle to a million.

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